Palestinian resistance organisations have shown disagreement with Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas’s recent decree for national council elections before the year-end.
On Saturday, July 19th, Mr Abbas’s office issued a decree calling for elections to form a new Palestinian National Council before the end of 2025, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
The left-wing Palestinian resistance organisation, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), has slammed the unilateral call for elections, amid an ongoing genocide in Gaza.
In a press release issued on Sunday, July 20th, the PFLP said that it “emphasises the importance of comprehensive elections based on national consensus and agreement, rejects the president’s decision to hold them unilaterally, and calls for a comprehensive national dialogue to confront fateful challenges.”
According to the Marxist-Leninist organisation, “The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine affirms its firm position on the necessity of holding comprehensive and democratic elections for all institutions of the Palestinian political system, foremost among them the National Council, as an integral part of the process of reforming and rebuilding the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), based on democratic national foundations that represent all Palestinians, both in the homeland and in the diaspora, and restore the PLO’s role as a comprehensive national authority in confronting the Zionist project.”
However, it asserts a consensus on such crucial decisions. It announced its rejection of Mr Abbas’s call as an important PLO constituent.
“Accordingly, the Front affirms its rejection of the decision announced by President Mahmoud Abbas to hold elections for a new National Council before the end of this year. It emphasises that this decision represents a departure from national consensus and a departure from the collective decisions that set the conditions for this process. This makes it a unilateral step that lacks national legitimacy and perpetuates division at a crucial moment that requires the highest levels of unity and coordination among all components of our people,” the PFLP said.
The decision to hold elections, for the first time since 2006, came after Mr Abbas chaired a meeting of the PLO’s Executive Committee in Ramallah.
Earlier in April, Mr Abbas called a meeting of all PLO factions in Ramallah, where he used the opportunity to appoint Hussein al-Sheikh as his deputy and likely successor. All major factions of the PLO, including the PFLP and the far-left Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), had boycotted the PLO meeting.
According to Wafa, the new council will consist of 350 members, with two-thirds representing Palestinians inside the occupied territories and one-third from the diaspora.
Mr Abbas’s office said a preparatory committee will be formed to organise the vote, led by the head of the Palestinian National Council.
The committee will include members of the PLO Executive Committee, political factions, popular organisations, civil society groups, and Palestinian communities abroad, Wafa reported.
Under the presidential decree, the committee is required to submit its electoral framework and arrangements for approval within two weeks.
However, opposing this decision, the PFLP said, “The Front believes that holding these elections must be the fruit of comprehensive national consensus and a step toward ending the division and restoring national unity, in accordance with the outcomes of the Cairo National Dialogue and the Beijing Declaration, which established clear foundations, mechanisms, and conditions that guarantee inclusive representation and create the national and political conditions for the success of this democratic entitlement.”
Highlighting the ongoing Israeli aggression in Gaza that has killed over 58,000 people, the PFLP further added, “The continued Zionist war of extermination against our people in the Gaza Strip, along with the policies of ethnic cleansing, Judaisation, and settlement expansion in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and attempts to impose a fait accompli there, constitute a serious obstacle to any comprehensive and fair electoral process, given the lack of guarantees for the participation of our people in Jerusalem.”
The PFLP also highlighted the problems within the preconditions set by Mr Abbas,
“The Front also strongly rejects the preconditions set by the President for membership in the National Council, particularly those related to full commitment to the current PLO programme and its international ramifications.”
“These conditions exclude a broad spectrum of Palestinian forces and actors and reproduce the crisis rather than address it, especially since this program includes failed political agreements that have contributed to the decline of our people’s rights,” the left organisation stressed.
“The true, national way out of this situation begins with a unified political will that rejects the policy of isolation and pushes for a comprehensive national dialogue with the participation of all forces, factions, and popular movements,” it added, emphasising consensus-building among the resistance forces.
“This dialogue will lead to agreement on a comprehensive national vision, a joint struggle programme, and an action plan that rebuilds our national institutions based on partnership and mobilises the energies of our people in the battle of comprehensive confrontation with the occupation and its liquidationist schemes,” the PFLP concluded.
Meanwhile, critics argue that Mr Abbas’s unilateral call for elections is done under Israeli pressure, as it wants to bar Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2006, from running again, while also cracking the whip on the left-wing PFLP and DFLP, who have also intensified their assaults on Israeli forces in Gaza.
It’s also alleged that the elections will ensure that Mr Abbas hands over the reins of Ramallah to Mr Sheikh. The other PLO factions, including the PFLP and DFLP, will not accept such a move, especially if there is no permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and a halt to continuous settler aggression in the West Bank.
It remains to be seen whether other resistance forces will also join the PFLP’s bandwagon or accept Ramallah’s proposal.
